Patreon LogoYour support makes Blue Moon possible (Patreon)

El Cereso Prison (Steel Butterfly & Adam)

Joanne had raised an eyebrow upon the man's initial compliment - or what had seemed like a compliment until it was following by a warning, turning the initial compliment into something which deemed her worthy of pity at best. It appeared that Joaquin's last remark was the start of yet another series of events which would throw her off-balance, catching her off-guard like most of the things here had.

Because no matter how hard she tried to hide it, of course she was scared. Terrified even. But it was not in her nature to give into the fear, to let the bad guys win. Even now that she was beginning to realize that the bad guys perhaps already had won and that no matter how she struggled, it would only confirm their victory over her.
And still, Joanne knew she had to do it: take the challenge rather than giving in.
Joanne thus merely smiled in response to the brunette's almost desperate plea; her smile telling the girl what she most likely already know - the former journalist would not drink the cups' contents. She simply could not give in. Not yet. That was not how it worked. That was not how she worked.

So she allowed the councilman to simply take through the doors, smiling a faint smile upon seeing the ironic text, before she suddenly found herself outside. Well, in an outdoor space surrounding by prison walls, that was. The sun's rays beat down on her exposed skin already and Joanne felt how little beads of sweat began to form themselves on her face and the rest of her nude body.
Despite understanding fully well how this would further favor whatever rigged odds that were stacked against her, she could not help but to curl up her lips in yet another faint smile.
They did not have all the time in the world?
She was to serve three lifetimes in this prison... How much more time could he desire to spent with her?
However, the smile was quick to disappear when another inmate brought him the whip before throwing a pair of awful shoes in front of her. She stared at the pink objects, realizing how difficult it would be to walk upon those horrid shoes - let alone run. Of course, Joaquin had thought of such difficulties, Joanne realized when he began explaining the rest of the rules. Every time he used the whip to emphasize his words, Joanne unwillingly flinched - but not so much as when he stated what would happen to her if she were to pass out.
It seemed that even passing out would not grant her an escape of some sorts; the situation resembling her experiences of last night with a scary precision. That was, at least she would get to run here.
Run, in the full sun without any chance of resupplying her already dwindling water supplies unless she caved in.
Whipped like some rabid animal whenever she would go too slow or fall.
And if she were to pass out...

"Twenty-five, Miss K," Joaquin's clear voice, accompanied by yet another of those sickening smiles, interrupted her thoughts. He pointed at the pair of shoes with his whip. Joanne felt how her gaze was drawn to the two glasses one last time, her lips curling downwards in disgust before she tore her gaze away again.
Instead, she focused her attention on the pink torture devices and began strapping them to her feet.
Her balance was fragile and Joanne found herself thanking the moments on which she had wore heels before - even though none had been as ridiculous as these. Both her toes and her heel were only half-supported by the small shoes, hurting with each wobbly step she took - but it worked. Somewhat.
At least she had sufficient pain in the rest of her sour body to distract her from the ones in her feet, Joanne told herself.
At least...
A sudden pain stung into her buttocks, a liquid fire running over them before painfully resounding in her now fiery red flesh. The sheer surprise of the impact was the only thing which had kept her from screaming even though the shock of it almost tipped her off-balance.
"Zero."
Shocked, she looked up.
It was Joaquin, regarding her with a raised eyebrow and that horrid smile as he held the whip between his hands before he raised the whip anew. Joanne would have snarled something at him were it not for the fact that she required all her attention elsewhere now: maintaining her precarious balance as she began to run...

It was hard. Extremely hard. The little droplets of sweat were forming quicker now that she had begun to move in the full sun, squinting her eyes as she tried to keep track of the grind and dirt. The hot air stung painful against her throat, adding more pain and obstructions to her already encumbered body as she sought to breathe.
Her feet almost stung with the same intensity as the now fading pain in her buttocks; each step forcing a painful impact through her feet, ankles and legs. Still, she managed - trying not to think about physics or anything similarly discouraging. Instead, she focused on the mental image of Joaquin - and that disgusted smile.
The anger which was triggered upon the memory was sufficient to at least somewhat numb the pains which shot throughout her body. Or no, it did not numb any of the sharp pain - but it made it more bearable.
For now.
 
Many of the inmates in the yard sensed that something exciting and entertaining was going on, and soon they crowded around her track, happy to have a crazy spectacle break off the dull and predictable prison life. Their wide carcasses formed an orange wall around her circle and trapped her inside it like a circus animal performing tricks in the manege. The innermost ring sat down on the dusty ground, and behind them stood numerous rows of onlookers hustling each other to get as good a view of the show as possible. They all shouted and cheered as she passed by, and all eyes were directed towards her. Or more precisely, her exposed pussy, her jolting ass and her bouncing breasts.

One of the men sitting down in the front row started taking bets, rapidly taking notes on a notebook and passing around cigarets. The pessimists gave her no more than five minutes, while some even dared to give her a full hour. Joaquin, who seemed to be pleased with the attention his little project had gotten wanted to get in on the betting as well. "You underestimate the power of this resolute women." His words were remarkably kind. "Bookie, put me down on ten packs that she'll hold three hours." Aside from a few whistles, the audience was silenced for some short seconds by his odd bet. He woke them up again by a loud shout. "Do you know that this fresh body will be all yours if she faints?" A deafening roar rose from the crowd.

Since Joaquin used an inner circle much closer to the center - the long whip allowed him to reach her sweaty body anyway - he could calmly stroll along and still be able to keep up with Joannes pace. The boss did not move a muscle except when he took a sip from his ice cold drink, where he sat with his fat body flowing over the sides of the lounger in the very epicenter of the scene. He literally let everything else revolve around him, like if he were the sun of his own solar system. "Joaquin, más rápido!" he muttered with a bored voice, and his adviser was not slow to follow up on the command. "Faster!" he shouted in an aggressive tone, letting the whip give her ass cheek a kiss as encouragement. "That's walking, not running!" he called out, and let the whip kiss her other ass cheek as well. He deliberately held back, just letting the leather tip barely touch her skin.

Every step was a challenge in the unstable shoes. The coarse gravel she was running on was not exactly a ballroom floor and it made her balancing even harder: the thin heel did not give her much support against the joggly ground. Many of the convicts seemed to be well aware of the dangers of dehydration and had plastic bottles of water with them, which they gladly drank from and even poured over their heads to cool off. No one seemed in the mood of sharing, however. It was not only the sun that heated the prisoners, but the sight of her nude, struggling body as well. They did not keep their feelings to themselves: "Nice tits!" "I'd fuck that ass!" "Want some dick, baby?" "Faster, slut!"

Joaquin's stern voice drowned out their shouts. "Do you know why you are running?" he asked. "Do you understand why you choose to run?" He laughed and shook his head. "I don't think you do. You could as well just take your medicine and have it over with, but still you choose the hard way knowing full well you will have to drink it up in the end anyway." Not yet fully satisfied with Joannes pace, he gave her another lash of the whip, this time not holding back the slightest as he let the single tail hit her back and leave a burning red line over her soft skin as a reminder. "That is not a rational decision, but yet you have made it. Do you even understand why?"
 
Dehydration was seldom a quick process and it was especially in warm and hot environments that people often kept careful tabs on their water.
They certainly did not engage in strenuous physical activity under such harsh conditions - to do so without knowing that water would be available to them was nothing short of foolish and would surely speed up the devastating process known as dehydration.
And yet, Joanne was doing exactly that.
Which each clumsy yet determined step, she was putting more stress on her already tired body. Sweat covered her cream-colored skin, the precious moistness glistening before it would dissipate under the relentless sun.
She tried to keep her squinting eyes on the ground, studying the track in front of her as if it would ease her wobbly steps in this treacherous somehow. Mostly, it allowed her to keep her gaze away from the seemingly endless supply of water. The light of the sun seemed to play with the liquid within the plastic bottles, almost as if the sun itself wanted to tempt her, as if it wished to show her the foolishness of her actions. The sun was not on its own though - quite a few of the inmates gave her surprisingly few hours - if even that - in the sun.
Joanne could not blame them, already feeling how her mouth slowly became more sticky and dry - further interfering with her attempts to breathe.
Then, a familiar voice bet that she would last three hours. Three hours!
The sharp inhalation of the hot air, which had been her body's attempt at showing her surprise, almost sent her coughing - which in turn, disturbed her already precarious balance. She almost fell, but before her leg completely slipped away, sheer panic steadied rather than further destabilized her body: Joaquin's reminder, coupled with the crowds roaring approval of said reminder, had been enough to trigger a much needed adrenaline-shot.

Still, the panic blurred out only so much - her feverish eyes flaring with pain when the whip suddenly impacted with the tender flesh of her ass. And again. Joanne almost jumped in pain before she gritted her teeth, adding the new marks on her buttocks to the ever-growing collection of bruises, sour spot and painful marks on her body. Nonetheless, she took Joaquin's encouraging words - or most likely, the painful reminders of his whip - to heart and increased her pace. Her increasing headache blurred out some of the pains, drowning them out with its relentless and painful throbs. It also muffled some of the shouts and lewd comments which she - or rather, her body - received, granting the panting woman at least something of a respite during her self-inflicted suffering.
One voice easily over stemmed the others however, rising above even the almost pleasant blur which her feverish mind was slowly becoming: Joaquin's. Asking her why.
Why this decision? Why not the easy one? Why postpone the inevitable?
They both knew that she would have to gulp down the disgusting mixture within the glasses in the end anyway; so why bother with this? The questions resounded in her head and whereas Joanne's determination was still firm, she noticed that her legs were increasingly unstable instead. The beads of sweat were no longer as easily replaced as they had been before, her skin becoming more and more exposed to the relentless sun, not even the cover of the salty sweat shielding it from the sun's rays anymore.
But the question remained. Why?

Then, another impact as the whip kissed her flesh anew. This time, there was more force behind it and Joanne gasped in surprise as the whip lashed against her back. Liquid fire seemed to run wherever the whip had touched her skin and the stinging burn took a whole lot longer to fade into a less painful glowing than the other lashes had.
The stinging pain took her mind off her other discomforts for just a bit, reminding her of a more pleasant side-effect of the dehydration: the decrease and sometimes even complete lack of tears in the later stages.
Unfortunately, it also took her mind away from her tired legs, no longer forcing them to move with the same precision as it had before.

The result was a stinging pain when Joanne suddenly felt how one of her legs collapsed underneath her. Her other leg was unable to cope with the extra weight and crushed knee-first into the coarse gravel, followed by the rest of her body. Her arms were only barely able to shield her face and thus safe it from the extremely painful impact; her tender skin often no match for the gravel as the two met. She felt her skin tear, small gashes and cuts erupting while the dazed woman tried to deal with the force of the blow.
She was not given such time however, a sharp pain blossoming in the flesh of her back as the whip bit her.
Joanne growled - or perhaps she screamed - her own mind had trouble keeping track of her actions when the whip impacted with her flesh anew, this time adding a red stripe to those already present on her exposed buttocks.
"Because." The words were almost growled while she glanced over her shoulder, her fiery eyes searching her tormentor as she gave him her answer. No reason. No reason other than that she simply could not. Could not cave in. Not yet.

The blurred sight of the man, calm and composed as he readied himself to grant her more painful encouragement, was enough to focus her mind again. With trouble, the young woman managed to steady her bloodied arms, slowly lifting herself onto her equally damaged legs. Joanne gasped when her struggle to get back onto her legs earned her another lash before she found herself moving once again.
Her steps were less steady than they had been before, but fueled with an almost desperate determination as she continued her way. Because.
Because.
Because.
That word was the only word which resounded clearly in her muddled brain as she went on, her damaged skin stinging underneath the sun even more. Joanne was uncertain how much longer she would hold - but she promised her tired body that it would be just a little longer.
She could not let herself go down without a fight.
She simply could not.
That, and she could not disappoint Joaquin, now could she?
 
As Joanne tumbled to the ground, the convicts around her cheered in anticipation. Off course they all hoped that this would be her final fall, that she would not get up again, so they could salvage her body and use her limp flesh to satisfy their lusts, one by one burying their dicks in every possible hole. And what a fuck doll she would be - the most realistic one ever!

But their hopes were not fulfilled this time, not yet. Except for a few inmates with cigarets invested in her early demise, they all booed as she struggled to get up on her feet again before the whip got to her. The arm she had shielded her face with had long red scratches on it, blood dripping from the deepest parts of the cut. Another stream of blood was emanating from her left knee and running down her thigh, eventually reaching her aching feet and making the tight shoe slippery as if keeping her balance was not already hard enough. Her sweaty body was now covered in the reddish sand and dust from the ground - the dirt had stuck to her arms, breasts, belly, everything that come into contact with the ground. It had not been long, and she already looked like a survivor from a plane crash.

Her trainer laughed at her short response and gave her an extra lash of the whip over her shoulder blades as reward. "You are doing this to yourself, miss K. You are choosing to suffer." he said once he had calmed down. "I may be the one who holds the whip, but you are the one who commands me to use it. For someone who is not a masochist it is a strange choice to make, to suffer. But there is a reason to why you do it, even though you are to confused to see it." More to teas her than because he was actually thirsty, he picked up bottle of water from the baggy pockets of his orange overall and emptied it in one go. "You are very predictable, you see." he said and wiped his lips of whit the backside of his hand. "Once you have caved in I will explain it all to you." he said, sounding as if he thought it was a very generous offer.

As Joanne kept running on her shaking legs, the sun kept rising higher and higher above her, until she almost did not cast a shadow at all. Around the track there was a trace of her sweat mixed with stains of blood that were quickly evaporating under the hot sun. Her first fall would not be her last. The combination of her inconvenient shoes, the rough ground and her jolty legs made it inevitable. Every time she hit the ground, Joaquin would release a thunderstorm of whiplashes on her, painting her back as well as her ass and the backside of her legs with glaring red stripes. Every time the sensitive skin on her forearms and knees, who had to take the impact, became more and more scraped up until they were nothing more than a mix of skin residual, blood and dirt. And every time her legs became a little weaker from the pain, hastening her next fall. It was a vicious circle that just kept accelerating beyond her control.

As time went on, more and more of the convicts lost interest in the show, especially since they all seemed to have underestimated her willpower when they placed their bets. The size of her audience shrunk until it was just a ring of inmates sitting around her, but that had the averse affect of making her fight visible to everyone no matter where they were on the open yard. Every time she fell, inmates would rush towards the circle to see if she had passed out yet, just to disgruntled return to their weight lifting every single time when they saw her get up again.

Every now and then the Boss ran out drinks, but it was always quickly refilled by a Mexican looking girl with long, wavy, brown hair that reached almost all the way down to her waist. Just as every other girl seen inside the prison walls, she was completely nude apart from a pair of high heels, and sometimes when the Boss was not pleased with only another drink he unabashedly ordered a quick blowjob as well, letting the girl spit his seed out into the half full glass that Joanne would eventually have to dink.

"Two hours and 50 minutes!" Joaquin called out with a proud voice and lashed the whip out at her legs in celebration. The sudden and unexpected pain caught Joanne off guard. She could see the ground coming towards her in a threatening speed but she was to weak to be able to brace herself this time. Face first she hit the ground, the edgy gravel pressing into her face. A sharp little rock pierced the skin right under her left nipple and ripped up a wound all the way down her sweaty breast, the stone still lodged into the wound.

Off course Joaquin was not late to punish her failure with the whip. Her skin had been so thoroughly worked by the whip that her whole back was blistering red but it was not until now that he unleashed the full force of his hand. Suddenly the burning lashes stung even worse and when he had got up to speed the snapping impact of the whip was enough to brake her skin, causing red stripes of blood instead of singed skin. Those wounds would not heel quickly, and the scars might never leave her body.

However, not even the prospect of ending the immense pain was enough to get Joanne up on her feet again. She was just physically incapable of doing it, as every source of energy and drop of water had been driven out of her body. "Come on, Joanne!" Joaquin shouted. "Just don't lie there! If you cant walk you can always crawl! I won't stop hitting you off course, but at least I will not let the guys loose on you if you keep crawling." Around them, the inmates had gathered again, eager to claim the rewards of Joannes collapse.

Joaquin was systematically letting the harsh whiplashes kiss her back, drawing a pattern of crossed lines, like the lacing of an invisible corset, in her blood. "It's just ten more minutes! Don't disappoint me now! I know you are a strong girl! I know you can do it!" he shouted while he whipped her, sounding like a trainer coaching a marathon runner on the last lap. "Just then more minutes! And then, I promise, it will feel like a reward to drink your price!"
 
Ten minutes.
Even those mere minutes sounded like an impossible assignment - or perhaps they were merely a seemingly impossible extension of the sick assignment which she had somehow inflicted upon herself.
The former journalist tried to remember why she had agreed to any of this again, what it could possibly be that had driven her so far. Resistance in order to maintain some shred of dignity was admirable but her current state, bloodied and covered in gravel, filth and other things, could hardly be described as dignified. Even the Mexican girl who had serviced El Jefe with more than glasses of water began to look dignified in comparison to her.
Perhaps even El Eduardo would leave her be, feeling that her battered frame was beneath him.
She would not blame him for it.

Joanne's mouth was completely dry now, the hot air which she inhaled through her shallow breathing tickling her tongue and throat in an odd manner. She could not begin to understand where the pains and aching came from this time because it felt as if every inch of her body had been hurt, bruised, burnt, cut or otherwise violated by now. The only certainty which she had concerning pain was the seemingly constant stream of lashes, beating down on her like some hellish rain, setting her skin ablaze over and over.
Sometimes it was as if there was a stinging eternity between them, leaving her with enough time to fully appreciate the impact of each of the whip's bloody kisses while the next moment she could barely distinguish one from the other.
Joanne was grateful for the fact that there were no tears stinging in her tingling eyes, the pounding in her head by now so loud that it drowned out most of the outside noises - perhaps even her own screaming.

And then..
It suddenly felt almost peaceful, the aching drumming inspiring an odd calm within her. For a moment, maybe two, maybe more, it was as if the drums blended together with the lashings - pain meeting pain. Even the idea of her back slowly being stripped of its skin seemed peaceful, bringing an odd calm to Joanne. At the very least it felt better than walking, stumbling about in slippery stilettos which were at least two sizes too small. Now, if she would only close her eyes and...
A hand. A hand. Groping her flesh.
Joanne was not even certain whether she had imagined it, any of it, but she suddenly jerked back to life. Well, whatever would describe her current state of being. Not-being.
Anything was better than being violated and raped anew. Anything. Anything?

"Ten minutes." The voice sounded hoarse. A barely audible whisper. Had it been her own voice?
A part of her was infuriated, angry with herself for doing this to herself while at the same time screaming at her weakness. Another part just wanted to give in, even now that she scrambled onto all fours. Joanne was no longer certain where the pain came from when she managed to steady herself, slowly beginning to crawl? Move on all fours?
Move.

Caving in now would be just as senseless as suffering for... Ten, nine? Eight? Five? Whatever indiscriminate amount of minutes. Would it not be? Was not all of this foolish? Senseless? Had she not taken it too far, hoping that she would gain... Something out of all this?
Unlike Joaquin, Joanne was not at all certain why she bothered to continue. Why she merely frowned - or perhaps not even that - as she lifted one hand, followed by a forward shuffling of her knee. Then the other hand. The other leg. Knee.
Ten minutes. Then nothing more.
Nothing, safe for the next humiliation.
Because somewhere along the line, there would be another stubborn refusal on her behalf.

... At least there was some satisfaction in knowing that Joaquin was wrong.
The distant pair of glasses still stood on the small table, their outlines faint. Regardless of her blurred vision, Joanne found that her feverish mind was quite capable of recalling its contents.
Yes, Joaquin had been wrong.
The twisted drinks looked quite tasteful already.
 
Joaquin smiled a satisfied smile as the exhausted girl conjured up her last strength and continued moving forward. He had relied on her finishing her task to the very end, and he knew that she would not let him down. Her strength was remarkable, he had to admit that, but it was more than compensated by the sheer stupidity of her persistence. Joaquin had played games with the minds of many girls before - it was his job to prepare the arrivals for their new purpose in life - and through the years he had come to an contra-intuitive conclusion: The most strong willed were the easiest to manipulate. All you had to do was to turn their own will against them. It was surprisingly simple! Especially when you had unlimited force at your disposal.

He had already completed the beautiful pattern on Joannes back, and since he did not want to ruin the marvelous piece of art the scars would be, he aimed the whip at her ass instead. To his own dismay he realized that he would to take it careful with braking her skin to much - el Jefe would want to use that piece of ass later, and then it could not be dripping with blood. To compensate, he doubled the frequency with which he hit the poor girl, letting the black leather tail lick her burning ass cheeks again and again.

When Joanne had completed the first lap on her knees, she could see the traces of it as she crawled around the endless circle another time. Wherever she had put her knees, there were spots of fresh, dark red blood, and there were countless small stains from the constant dripping from the wound on her left breast as well from her skinned back - she could feel how the blood that gushed out there formed small streams and run down her sides as she swung to and fro while she crawled forward. The blood mixed with the soil she was covered in to form a wet, filthy mud.

"Only three more minutes now and you'll win the bet for me!" Joaquin exclaimed. "If you just go on for those three short minutes you will be allowed to drink your rewards afterward!" Somehow everything seemed to have switched along the way. In the beginning she would have to go on unless she drank the cum as punishment - now she was allowed to drink it as a reward if she chose to go on. Joaquin did not seem to care about the flawed logic, he just continued to work the desperate girls exposed butt with the whip.

Some of the convicts were holding their breath, hoping that she would collapse before she reached the finish, while others shouted out their hopes loud: "Take a nap, senorita!", "A little pause can't hurt!", "Fucking crash, you piece of shit!". But the crawling girl kept moving forward.

"Ten. Nine. Eight..." When Joaquin finally began counting down from ten, the chorus of upset yells from the audience intensified. For every number, he gave her by now over sensitive ass cheeks another lash. Then he said the magic word: "Zero." Everyone was suddenly quiet, watching the girl in anticipation. What would she do? Would she drink? Would she crawl on? Would she crash right there and never get up? Even Joaquin forgot to make use of the whip as he waited for her response.
 
Her body tensed, every sour muscle aching, the bloody filth clinging to her painful and tortured skin and flesh alike. Joanne would have expected her body to then relax, to collapse underneath the pounding pain, the drumming sensations of her feverishly beating heart and throbbing head. But it did not happen.
Instead, she found herself thinking about her last interview. It had been with a young man... Or had he been middle-aged? Old perhaps? Clearly, her feverish mind was unable to recall his exact details in its dehydrated state. But she recalled his words with a stunning precision; being inside prison was bad enough but once you had served your sentence, you would find it would no longer get out of your head. The prison. It got inside your head, locking you in a specific state of mind, a very narrowly defined way of thinking.

Joanne only had to look at her own body in order to see the truth in his words. And yet, when she looked at her body, her head lowered as she stared at her exposed and heaving breasts, her now oddly quiet belly and her frozen legs: blood, gore and violence. Most of it, if not all of it, self-inflicted. Because she had refused to drink. Refused to re-fuel her supplies at the cost of humiliation.
What this excruciating self-torture had gotten her, she was not certain. The outlines of her body were blurred, faint - like the rest of her slowly fading vision. But she recognized the deep crimson which seeped from her back onto her belly. The thick, almost rust-colored crust of filth and blood on her left breast. She could swear she felt something move within the soft flesh of that breasts, wriggling in response to the painful beating of her heart. Sand, dirt, gravel - she recognized their blurred colors rather than their fine outlines, small stings reminding her of the cuts and bruises which they had carved into her flesh.

What had she done? Why... Why had she done it?
Joanne lifted her head again, the subtle movement making her feel sick, dazed and nauseated. She inhaled the hot air more sharply now, her breathing painful as if it no longer was capable of sustaining her.
Soon, it no longer would be. Not if she did not...
Growling - or whatever sounds erupted from her parched throat, leaving her cracked lips in order to accompany her sudden movement - Joanne forced one of her feet onto the ground. Her torn knee rested against her trembling belly, waiting for the other leg to follow its shaky example. She felt - rather than saw - the dark stains on her back, the increasingly thick and dark blood slowly beginning to seep down her back instead of running down her sides.
Then, she felt her other leg move, forcing her in a semi-crouched position while her still slippery feet struggled to maintain their grip on the small footwear. It hurt. It stung. But everything hurt and stung.

Her first attempt to straighten her legs failed, resulting in a clumsy return to her crouched position, her trembling arms shaking under the sudden impact. Her second attempt did not fail and even though the gravel suddenly seemed to shift and dance underneath her feet, Joanne managed to maintain a shaky, trembling stance.
Her feverish eyes sought Joaquin, resting confused on the wall of orange before she found him on the complete other side of were she had expected him to stand. Her attempt at taking a deep breath and readying herself for the confrontation, pushing away any emotion which might be in the way, resulted in a sharp pain in her chest. The pain forced her brow to knit itself together, a puzzled frown appearing on her face when her tired body refused to even cough.
She felt tired too, her mind, her whatever-it-had-been-that-had-dragged-her-into-this.
But she could not allow herself to rest now. She might never wake up. And tempting as that idea might be, she refused to die just yet.
Even if that meant dragging her pitiful form back to her tormentors and begging them for the next challenge.

Joanne managed to move her body forward without having to crawl. However, every pause caused her to sway dangerously on her legs, as if she was drunk with thirst. When she finally stood next to the man - or as close as she could manage anyway because her blurred vision refused to show her depth and distance in the same way as it had before, she opened her mouth.
It took her a moment, perhaps two, before her mind finally remembered how to move her lips, how to move her thick and dry tongue while her parched throat forced vowels upwards.
"I would like to have my drinks now."
Joanne was not even certain whether her mouth had managed to pronounce all the words or whether she had merely imagined saying them. The voice in which she heard the words being spoken certainly could not be hers; it was a soft and raspy voice, cracked almost. Surely this was not her clear yet feminine voice?
... Surely she had not just stated that she would have liked to have her drinks now and actually found herself thirsting for the disgusting mixture?
Deep down, she knew she had. Asked for it. Wanted it. Joaquins's words had become truth, tainting her muddled reality until she wanted the drinks. Regarded them as a reward rather than a punishment. Oh yes, the prison was getting into her mind, steely bars beginning to pierce her thoughts.
"Por favor."
 
As Joanne struggled to get up on her feet, the whole yard were in complete silence. The convicts had stopped shouting and could hardly be heard breathing as they all excitedly watched the staggering girl rise to her feet. The whistling sound of the whip coming towards her through the air like a plunging fighter plane was no longer accompanying her movements, as Joaquin let the long, black leather tail rest along his legs. Even the wind seemed to have been captured by her struggle and stopped: the dry, hot air around them had come to a complete standstill as the dust she had drawn up slowly settled. The only thing that could be heard was the crackling sound of her heels against the coarse gravel. El Jefe was holding his glass of orange juice in his hand and had the straw in his mouth, but he was to distracted by the tense scene to actually drink. For the first time he looked at the new arrival, at his new arrival, as if he had not considered her worth even that little effort until she had been reduced to a sweating, filth covered lump of shivering flesh.

Joannes proud stubbornness, or maybe her proud stupidity was a better description, reminded Joaquin of Pussy during her early days at el Cereso. She had refused to accept the name that was given to her, defiantly declaring that her name was Dianne every time someone used it. Every time she did, Joaquin had cut her left wrist with a steel razor blade, just making a shallow mark with it. Of course it had hurt, but she soon got used to it. The lax punishment had lured her further into her rebellion, just as Joaquin had hoped for. What Dianne did not know was that the cuts were not her punishment, they were merely to keep track of the scores. It was not until after a week or so when the line of scars had reached all the way up to her shoulder that the real punishment was delivered. They tied her up in the middle of the yard, about where Joanne was standing right now, and for every cut they rounded up one convict, more than a hundred in total, into a long, winding queue behind her. Every single on of them got to have a go with her. It took the whole day until the line was through, a day during which she did not spend a second without cock inside her pussy, ass or mouth. Close to midnight, when the last man had ejaculated deep inside of her asshole, one of the guards decided that he wanted to join in on the fun as well. That was when she had snapped.

It was so ironic. Just one more man to please, what did it matter when she had already had her body ravaged by over a hundred? It was a pointless fight: why try to save her pride when she had none left? It had cost her her teeth, but they were not the only thing she lost. Dianne died that night. No one ever saw a hint of her again, not of her fiery eyes, not of her sarcastic voice, not of her cold gaze. It was just the empty shell of the body she used to posses that was left behind, an apathetic and lifeless doll. But inside that body eventually something, no someone, new grew. Pussy, the happy whore, the perfect slave, was born.

Pussy was his greatest achievement. She was his pride. He was the artist that had sculptured her. But since the first time he had laid his eyes on Joanne he had been convinced that her body was the clay that could be molded into something even greater; she was the blank canvas of a new masterpiece. But deep inside he had feared that his command of the brush would not be good enough to complete this painting. Now, when he heard her speak, he did not doubt anymore. Much work would still be required, but eventually she would become whatever he wanted her to be.

When Joanne uttered the last two words - "por favor" - it was like the spell was suddenly broken. The silence was drowned as the crowd broke out in laughter mixed with applauds, cheers and obscene shouts. The bookie started to feverishly collect cigarets to deliver to the sole winner of the bet. "Since you have been such a good girl and asked so nicely, you will get your reward." Joaquin said and snapped his finger, smiling with the deepest satisfaction glowing in his eyes. Responding to Joaquin's snap, the Mexican girl with the long dark hair came forward to pick up the cocktails from the table in the center of the ring. Without any signs of compassion in her dark brown eyes she handed Joanne the large glass that Tits had filled. Previously it had only been half full, but thanks to el Jefe's sexual appetite it was now almost filled to three quarters now.

The inmates that encircled her started to clap their hands rhythmically, chanting "Drink! Drink! Drink!" over and over again. Joaquin had his stern, dark eyes fixed at Joanne as he began to speak: "While you drink, consider this: You refused to drink not because it served you, but because it served us. You chose to rebel not because you wanted to, but because we made you."
 
Joanne clutched the glass more than simply holding it, her trembling hands feverishly holding on to the glass. Her fierce eyes had trouble to focus themselves on Joaquin’s face. She registered his smile and felt how anger began to rise in response to the smugness, which she felt rather than actually saw upon his face – her feeble vision unable to process much more than blurs.
However, her body was unable to give any sort of voice to the anger – the strange determination which held her in its iron grip being the only emotion which governed her face. Perhaps an odd hint of pride – or shame, Joanne was slowly losing her ability to distinguish between the two now that punishment had become reward – tinged her face.
All she knew was that she was incredibly thirsty.
Hungry for the disgusting contents within the glass.

Joanne’s bloodied arms trembled while she rose the glass; her feverish eyes clumsily finding their way back to the councilman when his voice suddenly stung in her ever-drumming ears.
Because we made you.
Her brow furrowed when she began swaying more dangerously again – almost as if his very words had thrown her off-balance. Yet, when she rose the glass to her lips, her vision suddenly sharpened. It brought his face to her attention with painstaking detail, the intensity of his dark eyes giving her pause. The glass rested against her lips, her fingers folded around the glass as if she were a little child who was given a lecture on how things worked in life. The odd, musky scent of the glass’ contents began to sting her senses, her nostrils trembling slightly.
Joanne of course, refused to believe his words. Even though she still was uncertain what kind of madness had brought her to submit herself to such a torturous exercise, surely it had been something within her – and not an alien, hostile ‘them’, which had forced her mind and body.

Still, his words triggered a string of feverish thoughts from her rather receptive and feeble mind and not all of them were angry protests. No, just like the glass’ disturbing contents, which slowly began filling her dry mouth once she parted her lips, there was an odd receptiveness to his words. Small and fragile, but it offered his words a tiny place to nestle.
But Joanne was too preoccupied with the former, the thick, liquid-like substance whose almost salty taste slowly filled her mouth. Whether it was her mind or her body which protested the presence of the cum and saliva mixture which slowly began seeping down her throat, she was uncertain. But she had to force herself to swallow – the fact that she lacked any saliva of her own adding to the already problematic intake of the glass’ contents. Nonetheless, she managed. Gulp after gulp, the young woman began emptying the glass, every bit almost visibly going down her throat. She tried not to think about the fact that it was the sperm of almost the very persons she had been persecuting which now invigorated her. But they did, with each painful swallow she felt her body stir underneath her. Disgust, anger – and yet, her mind began to feel clearer already. Tempted with the prospect of actual fluids, water, her body finally emptied the glass.

Joanne’s eyes had never left Joaquin’s face, almost defiantly facing him the moment she had put the glass to her lips. With a bloodied hand, she wiped her lips clean, seemingly ignorant – or simply uncaring – of the fact that her mouth was now stained with crimson. Of course, the woman had not spilled a single drop and yet, she had raised her hand to her mouth. Perhaps it was merely to confirm that it had been her own lips, her own mouth and throat, which had tasted and transported the humiliating mixture. Perhaps it was simply habit.
Whatever the case, the woman – still far from stable on her feet – managed the faintest of smile as she held up the now empty glass.
“Gracias.”
 
As Joanne started to pour the content of the glass down her torrid throat the rhythmic claps and shouts of the audience broke down into an unruly thunderstorm of hollers and laughs. Had Joanne's vision not been so impaird by her delusional state she would have seen countless of faces distorted in an ambivalent mix of disgust and excitement. Everybody was thinking the same though. She actually did it! She actually drank the sickly poison! Every time she forced herself to swallow the salty brew of bodily fluids people gasped. It was like a watching a gory splatter movie: you did not want to look at the disgusting mess, but at the same time it was impossible to draw your eyes away from it.

"That's right, drink my cum!" someone shouted. "Mine to!" someone else added. "Mine's not in it but come here baby and I will give you an extra shot!" a third one said, and everyone around him broke out in laughter. Joaquin, however, did not laugh. To see the uppity bitch happily humiliate herself was not a matter of comedy to him. No, it was something much more sober and profound. What he was witnessing right now was the very essence of his work. It was what he strove for with all his actions and it was the intent of every word he spoke. This was it. When the cunt politely thanked him for her humiliation and even forced her exhausted face to produce a smile there was nothing more he could ask for. Filled with an inner serenity he smiled back. "You are welcome, cumdump." He was starting to understand what meditation must feel like.

The long haired girl took the empty glass from her trembling hands and quickly replaced it with the one Ass had filled up. It was filled up to the brim with the morbid venom and some of the viscous fluid run down the side of the glass like the foam on an overfilled glass of beer. Joaquin forced himself to rise up from his dreaming state and surface reality again. It was a sweat temptation to just get lost in the situation, but he still had an important task to complete. He needed the make her understand what she had just gone through.

"Am I not right?" he asked. "We knew you wanted to be though, to be strong. So we told you what you needed to do to be strong, and you gladly did it. Did I not tell you that I thought you were an enduring kind? And did you not do everything in your power to prove me right? Even though it only hurt you and pleased us?" Joaquin could not help to boast. He deserved to boast. "You have played the role we wrote for you: the proud rebel. And just because that's what you always have wanted to be cast in you gladly followed our script even though it inevitably led you here. I even decided the exact time you would stop running with that silly bet. I don't even fucking smoke!" He was talking faster and faster now, as he aroused himself with the story of his own power. His calm had faded away and instead he spat out his scornful words with nothing but contempt in his voice. "We even had Ass beg you to stop resisting, but off course it had the opposite effect. Since she represent all that you hate, all that you fear to become, you had to defy her. And defying her meant pleasing us." He was laughing while he spoke now, hardly able to speak clearly between bouts of rabid chuckles. "Your body is the victim here, but your mind is the perpetrator."

"Don't you understand? You became what we made you into! You are nothing but what we want you to be! You desire nothing but what we make you desire! You think nothing but what we make you think! You feel nothing but what we make you feel! You are nothing without us! Nothing! Zero!" he yelled at the top of his lungs. "Both your body and your mind is just a series of holes for us to fill. Without us stuffing your body with cock and filling your mind with content you are nothing. You are Zero."
 
The young woman accepted her second glass with less shaky hands, its digits no longer clutching the glass with the same desperate fever they had before. She was not bothered by the blurred expressions of the inmates; their faces oddly colored blotches above a vague wall of orange. Their shouts stirred the occasional shiver when they managed to rose above the slowly diminishing pounding in her head; each of them a crude reminder of the humiliation to which she had been subjected.
A shouted emphasis of the liquid humiliation which she began forcing down her throat anew once the second glass reached her parted lips.
Still, it were Joaquin's words which stung her the most - even long after he had spoken them.

Cumdump.
A vaguely conscious, bloody heap in which one dumped cum.
Well, you offered it a glass filled to the brim and she would accept it into her trembling hands before pouring it down her parched throat.
Was that her?
Was that really her, Joanne Karcher?
The up-and-coming research journalist? Respected by her older colleagues for her determination and persistence?
Cumdump.
The woman who had all but given up on her desperate attempts to get involved in a relationship, to maintain something of a personal life outside of work because she had found the story of her life? The story of everyone's life - if she were ever to complete it?
A proud rebel. Such was a title she could live with, foolish as her pride might have been.
Foolish as her dedication to her work, to this specific story and even to the odd and extremely painful 'race' had been.

Another load of the disgusting cocktail entered her mouth, an odd metallic taste entering the mix once the blood from her lips had begun to seep into her mouth. She swallowed, bringing the glass to her lips anew. The odd musky scent of before had been replaced with a more undefined, even less pleasant scent, which stung her nose every time she brought up the glass to her by now trembling lips.
Her green eyes watching Joaquin as he spoke, her eyes resting on his moving lips, his feverish eyes. Sometimes, her vision would allow her to see his face with detail; the smugness and pride with which he spoke perhaps stinging her even more than his words.

Slowly, but surely, something began to stir within the still feverish and faint woman. The look in her green eyes intensified even further once she had emptied the second glass, lowering her arms and holding the glass loosely in her right hand while the last remains of sperm still lingered in her mouth.
She had done exactly as he had described, first forcing herself to refuse the disgusting cocktail - especially when the other girl had begged her not to. Then she had accepted the challenge and even more so, allowed herself to focus on the time which her tormentor had set her. Every word he spoke felt like a slap in her face, but instead of a stinging pain, she felt anger. Rage.
It turned the little white mess in her mouth into a bitter, salty whole - stinging at her senses in the same manner as his words stung her pride.
Slowly but surely she realized that the more outrageous and ridiculous his claims became, the more clear her previously so feverish and befuddled mind got.
Or perhaps it did not so much clear as it was clouded with anger, indignation. Her wounded pride suddenly seemed to sting her, aching worse than her mangled body.

A victim, she. A victim of her own mind, at that.
Nothing, she.
Nothing without this despicable bunch of criminals to fill her out?!
Nothing?!
Each word was repeated in her mind, silently repeated in her thoughts, sheer anger beginning to line her vision.
Her whole life she had struggled to be everything but a zero. Took extra classes, put in extra hours at her work. Sacrificed her social life bit by bit just so that she would not be that. A zero. Worthless without others.
And here he was, an inmate, surrounded by other criminals, claiming that she was exactly that. A zero.
It was as if he was hitting her with his words, his laughter - continuing her humiliation by bringing it to a solely mental, a solely emotional level. It worked; she felt infuriated. The almost complacent way in which she had allowed him to turn her thoughts around, to turn punishment into reward, was thwarted. It's spell broken when he pronounced those last words.
You are Zero.

Joanne's green eyes suddenly narrowed themselves despite the fact that her feeble legs still unable to fully stabilize their tired selves on the torturous heels. She felt how her tongue stirred, pushing the last bit of cum to the front of her mouth.
Flashes of Pussy and the mental images of the way in which her teeth had been forcefully removed played throughout her mind momentarily flashed before her eyes. They were clear, unlike her mostly blurred vision.
She felt her aching body tense as it realized what her mind was about to make it do. A part of her was tired, exhausted. Most of her was tired, every last bit of her body aching and throbbing with pain. And still, she knew she would do it.
Her lips parted anew, but instead of spitting a venomous reply at the chuckling, grinning, laughing man in front of her, she released the last bit of the cursed concoction. Its precious yet disgusting substance was sacrificed to her wounded pride and roaring anger as she spat it at him.
Suddenly, Joanne saw everything very clearly; the little piece of saliva-with-cum, as it flew through the air; crossing the slight distance between tormented and tormentor with astonishing speed.
Perhaps she merely imagined it, of course. Perhaps her still-thirsty mind and body had simply allowed her this little respite.
Nonetheless, her action needed no vocal support, no verbal component.
The woman simply stared at him, her eyebrows raised ever so slightly while she almost casually swayed on her legs - defiance screaming in her fierce green eyes.
Joanne only prayed that this part was not just another pre-written part of Joaquin's script.
 
His work of art had almost been done. And then a misdirected chisel and a to hard blow with the hammer and the whole rock cracked in front of him. Joaquin was still shivering but now it no longer was out of excitement and arousal, it was of pure anger. He's eyes narrowed and he panted heavily as he wiped the disgusting mix of cum and saliva of his face with the backside of his hand. Around them the crowd broke out in laughter once again. But this time it was not at the disgraceful girl and her pointless struggle. No, it was at him. Even el Jefe joined in the laugh. "Watch out, Joaquin, your dog bites." he said. She had made him a fool. And for that she would have to pay. Just like Pussy this girl had snapped the very moment when their humiliation was about to end. Why did they always falter on the finish line?

"Jordán! Take the fucking whore to the tub!" he yelled at the top of his voice, speaking Spanish for the first time. Then he slowly turned around gazing at the members of the audience one by one with hate filled eyes. "And you can all shut the fuck up unless you want to join her!" Suddenly it was dead silent again. The only thing that could be heard was the puffing breaths of Jordán as he pushed his huge body through the crowd, his thick bald head sticking up above the others. Joaquin took a step forwards towards Joanne, ending up so close that she had to look up to be able to meet his blazing eyes. "You will regret this." he hissed. Then suddenly Joanne was lifted from the ground by a pair of big fat hands as Jordán threw her over his shoulder. He only needed one hand to hold her legs, and her torso hang down over his shoulder down his back. His orange overall was slowly painted red by her blood, but he did not seem to mind.

With brisk steps he carried her towards the prison building, the crowd parting around him as he walked out of the circle. He took her inside to the canteen that was now empty except for Tits and Ass who were collecting the used bowls and cleaning the tables. They both froze as they stared at Joanne's beaten body with bleak faces. "Shit..." Tits mumbled and rushed away. Jordán took no note of them but simply continued with large clumsy steps with no thought about the comfort of the human body that was bouncing up and down on his shoulder. He walked through a door and down some narrow stairs that led to a long corridor in the basement. "One. Two. Three." he counted loudly as he passed doors. At the forth he stopped, said "left" and turned right. Looking down at his own feet and thinking carefully for a couple of seconds he caught his own error. "No. Other one." he said and actually turned left this time. The thick door led to a small room with bare concrete walls. It seemed to be some kind of access point for the plumbing system because countless metal pipes ran criss-cross under the damp ceiling. The only piece of furniture in the room was a stainless steel bath tub standing in the corner. "Jordán take whore to tub." the giant said, repeating the instructions he had received from his boss as he carelessly dumped his luggage on the cold concrete floor.

Suddenly the echo of footsteps, high heels against a hard floor, could be heard throughout the basement. A second later Tits stood in the doorway, holding a bucket of water in one hand and a white cloth bag in the other. She was smiling a broad and friendly smile, but it was not reflected in her eyes which showed nothing but fear and nervousness. "Jordán, honey, won't you be a good boy and let me take care of her first?" she said, sounding like a insecure teacher talking to a grudging five year old. The big mans face lit up in wide, happy grin as he looked up at her ample breasts. "OK, Tits." he said in his slow voice and nodded eagerly. "Good boy!" she replied and gave him another of her fake smiles before she got down on her knees next to Joanne.

"I'm Danielle." she said in what was not much more than a whisper. Wasting no time she got straight to work, starting with pouring some of the cold water from the bucket right down over Joannes body to get rid of the worst of the dirt. "I trained to be a nurse at UT Austin before I ended up here." she continued with her voice suddenly filled with bitterness. "They let me take care of the other girls. Just to keep them alive so they can be used even more." She picked up a piece of cloth from her bag, soaked it in the water, and started dabbing Joanne's wounds. "Listen, I know you are new here. And I know it's hard to just give in. But you can't keep going on like this. I have no idea what you did to provoke this but if you keep bitching sooner or later I won't be able to stitch up whats left of you." she pleaded to her with a voice filled with desperation. "You will need help to make it through this place. I've been around for a bit more than a year, so I know my way around. If you have any questions, I suggest you start asking."
 
Joanne was uncertain whether she was still smiling or whether she was grimacing in pain when the giant lifted her off her feet - taking her away from the no-longer laughing Joaquin. The research journalist had little doubt concerning the consequences of her daring action; the fact that the others had burst out in laughter and that even El Jefe had deemed her action worthy of comment filled her with both pride and fear.
That pride had continued to drum quietly in her head even when Joaquin had stepped closer, his oddly impeccable prison suit providing a stark contrast against her bloodied and battered form. She knew she would regret this; had known it even while her tongue had coiled itself around the little ball of saliva-and-cum. But she had been unable to stand and take the humiliation in complete silence. She had taken so much already - and yet, his last words had pushed her over the edge. Away from the complacent, exhausted submission and stirred her into an anger-induced rebellion.

Now, she found herself bouncing up and down in a rather painful manner as the giant inmate transported her back inside. Joanne could not help but to wonder whether the blunt pain, its impact sending shocks of a more stinging kind of pain throughout the rest of her body, was but an introduction to the more extreme pains which would no doubt follow soon after this.
Her eyes darted over the quickly changing prison-floor as she tried to hold on to that drumming sense of pride, her breath still unstable and raspy. Even though her vision was still somewhat blurred, she found the rapidly changing views nauseating. Swallowing, she forced back the increasingly unstable contents of her stomach - extremely unwilling to taste the horrid mixture a second time before she closed her eyes.
She only vaguely heard the enormous man speak to himself - the continuous movement interrupted when he first turned one side and then back, only to turn to the other side. His third set of words apparently signaled their arrival at their destination and Joanne screamed in surprise when her sudden weightlessness was stopped by the hard concrete floor. Joanne was still moaning confused, her now half-open eyes surveying her new surroundings with a dazed look when an unexpected sound interrupted her thoughts.
Heels. A woman's voice. A woman's voice?

Joanne was still not entirely certain what was happening when she heard a name being whispered to her. Not Tits, but the woman's real name. Danielle. The impact of the woman's real name was emphasized when a sudden cold spread through her body, the icy water sending shivers throughout her previously almost overheated body. Joanne gasped for breath while she forced herself to focus on the sounds which came from the nurse who was tending to her. They, unfortunately, were far from reassuring; the very idea that these men were capable of forcing another US-citizen into this humiliation being quite a bleak prospect for her own future. She noticed how the already soft drumming of her pride suddenly drummed a lot less loud. Joanne felt angry upon hearing those dis-encouraging words too, of course. She had a seemingly endless supply of that; anger, fueled by indignation and injustice. Still, the cold water reminded the angry but frightened woman of every cut and bruise which she had suffered already. And all of this, all of this had been inflicted upon her within the span of a mere day. One day..!
Of course, Joanne had been aware of this before. Painfully aware of the fact that in the end, she would either have to cave in or simply... Perish.
Still, the fact that the woman next to her had survived under these circumstances for more than a year, frightened Joanne. Extremely so.

The research journalist winced slightly when Danielle began cleaning some of the wounds, clenching her jaws upon another before she allowed herself to reply.
She had many questions. Many, many questions - as befitted someone in her line of work.
But she also realized that she had very little time. Still, Joanne found herself scooping some of the now stained water into her hands, greedily sucking it up and allowing it to flow down her throat, thirsty as she was before she replied to the woman next to her.
"What do you suggest I should do next?" the woman asked in a whisper, before attempting to scoop up yet another bit of tainted water from her bruised body. The question might have been tinged with anger, but even so, the look on Joanne's face was serious as she addressed the nurse. Joanne still felt loathing and anger upon the mere idea of completely giving in and to allow such humiliation and nullification of what she was, of all that she stood for still felt wrong. Horribly wrong. And yet, she needed to look only at her beaten body to realize that she might find herself 'nullified' in a rather literal way. She only needed to remember the intense look on Joaquin's face that she might even suffer such a permanent ending regardless of what she was about to do next..
 
Danielle smiled at her question. "That's an easy one." she said and laughed a cynical laugh. "Whatever they tell you to. I don't know what they are up to with you. Caroline, you know the girl they call Ass, was 'thrown in the tub' one time when we were new here. I guess that's that one." she said and nodded towards the steel bath tub. "She was stupid enough to tell the Boss that her parents were rich and important and that they would have him punished. Afterward she was completely horrified, but she refused to tell me what they did to her. Just said she would punch me if I ever asked again." Directly after she had told the little story she regretted it, after all scaring her patient was the last thing she wanted to do even though the new inmate seemed to need a little bit more fear than she currently possessed. So she smiled a vague, conciliatory smile and tried to dismiss it all by saying "...but it can't have been that bad." without managing to sound very convincing at all.

The nurse examined Joannes cuts and bruises while she spoke. From her bag she picked up a swab of cotton and an unlabeled plastic bottle with a clear content. She dripped some of it onto the cotton. "This will burn like hell. Just try to lie still, OK?" she said and pressed the swab to the still open wound that ran from her left nipple down her breast. While she dabbed the alcohol soaked cotton against the bloody wound she continued her advice. "When you're in trouble it's always a good idea to crawl a little. Apologize, tell them what a bad girl you've been, beg for forgiveness. And offer your body to them. If you make them horny enough they might go for just banging you instead of whatever it is they are up to. Always do that with Joaquin! I promise, the wild beast he becomes when his dick does the thinking is a much nicer acquaintance than the human being he is when his sick brain is in charge." She chuckled coldly as she reminisced all the times she had manage to talk and beg him into fucking her. "And he has a week spot for horny damsels in distress. If you just put on a little show for him and tell him how much you have longed for his cock, that you just behaved bad because you wanted him to fuck you harder, then he can't resist it."

Jordán had sat down on the floor with his back leaned against the tub. His one real eye was still fixed at Dianne's tits, while the blank porcelain one just sat there. He moved his head to follow every movement she made and every now and then when they shook a little he started to giggle delighted. His half open mouth was frozen in the big smile that seemed to be impossible to brush away from his face. While he waited for Dianne to finish he picked what was left of his nose with his thick index finger.

As Dianne cleaned the dirty wound her fingers found the little sharp rock that had scratched up the wound to begin with. It was still lodged into Joannes flesh, and the nurse had to press her thin fingers into the wound to manage to get it out. She held up the blood covered stone in front of her and looked at it with a sour face for a few seconds before she threw it away over her shoulder. Then she put down the cotton wad and picked up a bent needle with a thin white thread instead. "Off course they don't let me have any anesthetics." she dryly noted as she pressed the tip of the needle against the skin right under her nipple. Giving Joanne just a short second to brace herself, the nurse pushed it through her flesh. The needle was followed by the long thread. Even though it was thin, it felt as if it could just as well have been glowing barbed wire that was running through her breast.

In a useless attempt to distract her patient Danielle went on talking. "You will probably be kept as a toy within the cartel. American girls are worth much more, you see." she explained while she began the second stitch. "The Mexicans are what they call 'public utilities' - they are rotated among the regular inmates. They have to suffer through a lot more fucking than we do, but on the other hand fucking is usually all the inmates do with them." The bitterness that she said it with made it sound like if they had reasons to envy the Mexican fucktoys.
 
Joanne tried to keep her mouth shut when the nurse started off with what would become the red thread throughout her rather unnerving story: do whatever they tell you to. She managed by clenching her jaws upon another, which had the added advantage of her easily being able to grit her teeth and suppress any verbal signal of pain.
Do whatever they tell you to.
'They' being a bunch of lustful inmates at best. What this 'worst' might be, the wounded woman refused to think about. Nonetheless, Danielle somehow seemed intent upon imprinting several images in her mind when she told Joanne about Caroline's predicament. The fact that the girl, Caroline - Caroline and not Ass! she reminded herself sternly - had refused to speak of the matter any further did not bode well at all. The meek and rather unconvincing 'but it can't have been that bad' earned the nurse a silent but angry glare from her patient.

However, the patient quickly conceded her anger. Instead, she distracted herself by scooping up another pitiful amount of water from her bruised body, bringing her wet hands to her mouth and clumsily suckling the precious moist from them.
Her desperate drinking was interfered with a stinging pain however, and only too soon, Joanne was too occupied with muffling her own pained moans to further slake her thirst. Of course, the physical pain once again proved to be inferior to the mental anguish caused by the other woman's words. The worst was not the humiliating image - or rather, a whole series of humiliating images - which those words brought into existence within the stubborn journalist's mind. No, it was the fact that the latter realized that these cold words might very well be true. That begging and squirming were viable ways of survival instead of mere acts of humiliation. The odd giggling in the background only seemed to emphasize this rather discomforting conclusion.

Again, Joanne gritted her teeth - this time because the other woman was prying with her fingers into the wound on her left breast. Her mind was still not entirely functional but the stinging pain and occasional sips of water which she managed to bring to her lips were enough to lift at least part of the fog. She was still processing the nurse's next words when she suddenly felt something cold sting near the wound - followed by a surprisingly sharp pain. A sharp pain which did not end there, but continued in an odd aching manner. Joanne winced in pain; first at the sting of the needle and the painful thread which followed through her skin and then at the pain in her left cheek. Clearly she had failed to clench her jaws upon another this time; a small piece of her flesh getting caught in between.
The pain of the latter was no worse than the former and yet, Joanne felt tears stinging in her eyes.
At last her body had sufficiently re-hydrated itself to allow for such a possibility for humiliating wastage of water again, she tried to tell herself - noticing that her own grim outlook on the situation was only strengthened by the nurse's words.

Sure, Joanne felt anger. Outrage. Indignity. Her usual response to situations far less severe than these. However, as she focused her eyes on the distant tub - stubbornly ignoring the almost childish giant which leaned against it - the journalist realized that it was not merely fear which stung at her anger this time.
It was... She could not name it, but Ti.. Danielle's words painted a rather grim and desolate picture. Even more so because the woman who spoke them, had been living, no surviving for over a year now. A year. Here.
She wondered how long the doubt would maintain, how long the anger and resistance would remain this time; fear already gripping at her painful throat as she stared at the cold metal of the tub.

Suddenly, an odd smile curved Joanne's lips when the nurse continued her painful stitching-work. She was still uncertain what to make of Danielle's words and what to do with them when she replied - and not without a slight shiver:
"Variety is the spice of life."
 
The nurse stopped stitching when Joanne had spoken. She just stared at her with disbelief in her dark brown eyes. Then finally she broke the silence with a loud laugh. "You're fucking crazy, has anyone told you that?" she asked and shook her head. Then she resumed her delicate work as a seamstress with increased tempo as the thread got shorter for every stitch. The dark skin of her fingers were covered in dark red blood. To take Joanne's mind of the pain Danielle kept talking.

"Caroline and I are friends since forever. You see, my sweet old momma works in the kitchen of the huge corn farm outside Austin that Caroline's parents owns. I grew up in halting, old hovel just far enough from the mansion so they wouldn't have to see it from their yard. Her folks were kind enough to let me play with their daughter despite... you know." Thinking about her childhood made her feel quite merry, something that was reflected in her voice. It made it easier for her to relax while she worked, and soon she had finished the first wound and covered the stitches with a skin colored adhesive patch. It was not until then she noticed Joanne's desperate attempts to get something to drink. "Oh, you want water? Why didn't you just say so?" she asked as she filled her cupped hands with it and slowly let it pour down into Joanne's mouth.

After giving her a couple of handfuls of water she went on to work on the deep cuts on Joanne's knees. She followed the same routine: first water, then alcohol and after that the sewing. "Anyway, after we finished college we moved in to Austin together. That's when I started to study to become a nurse. Caroline's parents wanted her to become a doctor so that was what she did. Everything was fine until she started to date this asshole from Mexico. When her parents found out they refused to send her any more money unless she dumped him." She sighed deeply. Apparently this part of the story wasn't as fun to tell. When she looked up from the knee she had just patched up her eyes were watery. "We needed money. What I made working night shifts at Hooters wasn't enough for us both to live on. I got her a job there, but she quit after the first day. She said she refused to sink so low." Her voice was breaking up, and she was barely able to whisper the words. Now she was no longer telling the story to distract Joanne from the stitching, she was stitching to distract herself from the story.

"Then her boyfriend came with this magic opportunity. We would get thousands of dollars with just one days work. All we needed to do was to go to Juarez, pick up a bag and take it through the customs back to the U.S. I didn't want to do it, but Caroline had made up her mind and I couldn't let her go alone." Tears were rolling down her cheeks now. Her crying was silent: no sobbing or heaving, just slowly dripping tears. "The Mexican police, they knew we carried something. They didn't even have to search to find the cocaine. So we both got five years for smuggling. Off course it was her boyfriend who set it all up to trap us here, but Caroline refuses to believe it. For a long time she was convinced that he would come to her rescue somehow but now we just don't talk about him. Last time I mentioned him she punched my face." Despite the fact that Danielle would obviously not have ended up in el Cereso were it not for her childhood friend, there were no hint of accusation in her voice. It sounded more as if it was all just due to some unseen force of nature that no one could be blamed for.

"I'm sorry, I'm just rambling on." she said and wiped the tears away from her cheeks. "Could you please turn around so I can take care of your back as well? It looked pretty bad. And I shouldn't be telling you my life's story, I should answer your questions."
 
"Don't worry," Joanne said in a reassuring manner, the look in her eyes softening once she allowed her gaze to rest upon the nurse once again. She smiled a faint smile as she managed to sit up, stubbornly ignoring the stinging pain in her legs and buttocks as she did so. Once she had seated herself on the cold concrete, Joanne looked again at the nurse; the latter's tears inspiring a genuine feeling of compassion for her. With one of her hands, Joanne reached for Danielle's shoulder, giving it a gentle squeeze.
"Your talking takes my mind off the things here. And the stitching. Especially the stitching." Again, the wounded woman managed a faint smile, her green eyes studying the emotional woman carefully.
The stitching had been a dreadful experience indeed; especially the odd and painful tickling whenever the thread went through her fresh skin. But Ti.. Danielle's words had taken her thoughts away from the painful mending of her flesh and instead allowed her to worry about things not concerning her own pitiful state. Joanne was grateful for that; very grateful.

"Besides, your story did answer some of my questions," the auburn-haired journalist continued before she paused in order to begin the painful undertaking of turning her body around. She inhaled sharply when the cold floor was pressed against her breasts, several more sharp breaths following when the rest of her body, too, came into contact with the almost icy concrete.
Joanne had allowed herself to move slightly, unwilling to lay down on the fresh crimson stains which were in the place where she had previously laid. "Like how you got here." The woman shot Danielle another glance, accompanied by that same faint yet reassuring smile as she supported her upper body with her still somewhat shaky arms. Damn, the floor was cold. "And I have also learned that it unwise to bring up certain subjects with your old friend. Which, no doubt, are good things to know as well."
Joanne's tone continued to be reassuring. While not completely calm, the nurse's talking had indeed allow Joanne's thought to focus on something else entirely. Something which was not about her own pain or even on what was about to come. "Are there other useful things which I should know about? How to deal with particular men? Which ones I should avoid at all cost?"

Resting her head on her arms, Joanne looked up at the other woman again, studying her features. "It can't be that bad," she commented wryly in response to her showing her back, clearly mimicking the nurse's earlier comment. It was meant as a joke of some sorts even though even Joanne had to admit that the prison was making her sense of humor quite grim indeed.
Which seemed only suitable, given the fact that what was about to come, what was about to happen once Joaquin got here - would be quite grim as well. At least... At least it would not be hard for her to squirm, Joanne decided; feeling the familiar fear creep back in now that she looked at the door instead. Because the fear which she felt, was quite real.
Very real even.
 
When Danielle saw her patients back she decided it was best if she just didn't reply to the comment about how bad it could be, for the sake of the patients mental comfort. Those nasty wounds would most certainly scar even if they would be treated by a real professional, and not a first year student as Danielle. As a matter of fact she had never actually performed any sewing as a part of her education; that was not until the second year. But she had seen an instruction video once and by now she had gotten more practical experience than she had wished for inside the prison. She was not quite sure about what the correct technique was, but with time she had developed her own method that at least worked well enough.

She started to scrub the woman's back with the wet rag to get rid of all the congealed blood. "You'll need to know how to deal with the Warden. He doesn't like resistant girls at all. Joaquin and the other think it's fun to play with the uppity bitches, as they call them, but the Warden requires nothing less than perfection. That's why all the girls are sent down here to begin with. Joaquin and the others are in charge of breaking the girls down and slowly suffocate every aspiration to humanity in them. That's what they did with Dianne, the one who lives under his desk now. You see, every now and then a girl is sent back up to the Warden to become his pet, but only the most well behaved and submissive ones have a chance at that."

She decided to prioritize the deepest cuts since she did not know how long time she had. While sewing she continued to speak. "It is a very sought after opportunity because it's basically the only way to get out of this hell. You get warm showers, better food and a basket with cushions to sleep in. On the other hand you will have to give up everything that's human about you. No talking, no walking, only eating from a bowl..." Despite the horrific state she described her voice sounded dreamy as if it was a tropical paradise island she was speaking about. "Caroline is probably the next one to get a promotion. Since that incident with the tub she has worked really hard for it."

"When it comes to the guys, Joaquin is the worst." she said as she finished one whiplash wound and quickly moved on to the next. "The Boss is OK once you get used to the sweat. Just remember not to speak unless spoken to and whatever you do don't look him in the eyes. It makes him completely mad." She stopped to think for a while about who else to tip Joanne about. "Reyes, the old guy who sat next to you during breakfast, has been here the longest - he was sentenced to life when he was in his teens. If you kiss and cuddle a lot and pretend that you fall in love whit him you can get him to be your friend. I think it's because it takes his mind of his fiancee who never came to visit."

In a remarkable tempo, the nurse stitched up another of the wounds. "And then there's Jordán." she said in a much louder voice. "He is the best of them all! Such a cute boy! It's always fun to play with him!" The large man laughed happily and clapped his hands, showing no signs of understanding the obvious fact that Danielle was just sucking up to him.

Danielle could hold her curiosity back no longer than this. "How did you end up here anyway?" she finally asked.
 
Joanne no longer had a blurred fever, a thirst-inspired fog covering her mind. It had been lifted bit by bit, sip by sip, each precious drop of water being greedily consumed. At first, nothing much had happened and even the story about how Danielle and Carolina had seemed distant. An almost pleasurable distraction despite its grim tone.
However, everything which the nurse had told her while working on her back had been received with an almost aching clarity. It seemed ridiculous, Danielle's little 'manual' adding to a delirium which had already passed. Do this, do that. It sounded like a bad horror story, like something which Joanne would write down while interviewing someone. Not information which might be vital to her survival in some horrific prison. Not... The truth.

The journalist tried to hide her frustration, her anger when the woman who stitched her back spoke about the Warden. About the way her intonation betrayed her longing for a position as a human pet. Or no, not even a human pet. A pet. Which accidentally happen to resemble a human in terms of appearance. How there were girls working to get such a degrading position. Working hard.
The rest of the information which was being relayed to her, did little to take away either her frustration or her anger. Instead, it confirmed both - but at the same time, Danielle's words inspired that horrid fear within her again, stirring it anew.
She needed no reminder that she had screwed up and yet Joanne knew that she would not have made a different choice even if she could have. She suddenly dreaded the day that she would. The day upon which she would do everything to survive and the day upon which she had stopped wondering what it was that was surviving.

"I murdered three people," Joanne then replied in regard to the woman's last question - her train of thought stopped by the nurse's question at last. The journalist's voice betraying more of her bitterness over this 'fact' than she had wished to. "I have never seen their faces and never met them, but apparently the evidence was so overwhelming that my denial in court did not matter at all. For once, the Mexican justice system worked extremely efficient. I found myself shipped off to this prison immediately after the trial."
Joanne frowned, her brow furrowing as she stared at the door, her gaze thoughtful and empty at the same time.
How had things come to this? How long had it been that she had seen anything of the civilized world? Mere days at most and yet, she was laying here, her body stitched up like some freakish rag doll. And Joanne had little doubt about needing a lot more of the nurse's thread and needle once - and if - she got out of this room again...
Joanne drew in a sharp breath, the pain from the stitching having faded to the background, joining in with the rest of the drumming pains when she focused her gaze upon the door once more.
"I will not bother you with the exact details but I can tell you that the Juarez cartel does not like journalists. Especially not the persistent kind."
 
When Joanne said she was a journalist Danielle's face shone up even though she did her best to suppress the hope that was starting to grow inside of her. "You're a journalist?" she asked with an exalted voice. "Doesn't... doesn't that mean that people will be looking for you? And try to..." She stopped mid sentence when the sound of resolute steps could be heard from the corridor outside.

"Shit." she mumbled as she hurriedly tried to at least put plaster on all the wounds on Joanne's back. While her experienced hands moved frantically she talked in an equally rushed tempo. "When I was a kid I used to hide out in the corn fields." she said, for some peculiar reason choosing to use the little time they had to tell stories from her childhood. "Whenever I was angry or scared or just wanted to be alone, I ran out into the middle of the fields and just lay down on the ground. No one could find me and yell at me. It was just me, the soil beneath me, the blue sky above me and an ocean of corn." She spoke so fast she hardly had time to breath, and the memories made her voice crack up again. "That's what I do in here as well. I hide inside my mind in an endless field of corn. And they can never change who I am or what I am, because they can't find me. They think that they hit me, that they fuck me, that they degrade me. But I'm not there. I'm hiding in my field of corn." The steps were coming closer and closer. "You can not let them find you, Joanne! You must find a place to hide!"

That instant the door was slammed open. Joaquin was standing in the doorway, looking just as furious as he did when Jordán had carried Joanne away from him. He looked down at the two girls with bloodshot eyes burning with rage. "That's enough, Tits." he hissed. Without even giving her a chance to leave by herself he grabbed her black hair and pulled her to her feet just to drag her to the door an throw her meager body down on the floor of the corridor. She just silently let him do it, well aware that the other girl would be the one who would pay for any resistance she made. Joaquin picked up the bucket and heaved the cold water over her. It was followed by the bucket itself and the white cloth bag with medical supplies. He finished by closing the door again with a bang.

Once he had got rid of the Good Samaritan his attention turned to the stitched up body lying on the floor, the very object of his hate. He placed one foot on each side of her and then bent down over her so he could grab her arm and use it to turn her body around. She was lying on her back again, because he wanted her to see what he did next.

As he towered up above her in his orange suit he was tying some kind of knot on a rope. He seemed to know it well, because he did not have to look at the rope while he tied it. Instead his dark eyes were studying the pipes that ran under the ceiling. Some of the were quite sturdy. He nodded to himself and looked down at the girl at his feet again. "My dear, I hope you do understand that I can not let an incident like this one pass without consequences." he said, the faked sweetness in his tone not hiding the anger behind it. "It would lead to complete anarchy. No, I must make an example out of you." It was not until he was finished with the knot that Joanne saw what it was. He had tied a noose.
 
The cornfield would not suffice.
The thought had played through her mind even when the dark-skinned female had been thrown out the room in an almost if not literal fashion. The last reminders of her presence - her bag and the bucket with the cold water - had quickly followed after her; both of them having been removed in the same brutal but efficient manner.
The cornfield would not suffice.
Most of all because unlike Danielle, Joanne did not see how the oceans of corn could feel like a refuge to anyone. When she was a little child, she had gotten lost in one of those green-gold plant-oceans during a school-trip. The journalist remembered only too well how the children had decided to play tag in the field. How she had ran and ran until the sounds of the other children had dimmed. The little Joanne had wandered for hours through the fields; each towering plant looking exactly the same as the one next to it. Once it had gotten darker, her cries for help had been answered only with the rustling of the corn plants. Their rustling had reminded her of some sort of twisted whispering - as if all the bad horror movies which involved corn fields had not been scary enough yet.

Joanne knew her fear of the corn fields was irrational. Stupid even. It was induced by a single bad experience and a lifetime of watching cheap horror movies. It did not make any sense, especially because she had immediately thought of the ocean as her personal refuge when Daniella had described hers'. The ocean. Wave after wave crashing down on the sandy beach, the roaring of the sea drowning out whatever thought the stern winds would not have blown away just yet. And still, when the ocean was green-gold instead of blue and clear, she found herself terrified.
Completely irrational.
It made no sense.
No sense at all.
Just like her little rebellion lacked any true sense.
Why had she bothered to spit in his face after having suffered through so much? Why was it that her mind had rebelled at that very moment? It had been just a word. Zero.
Of course Joanne knew the answer to all of those questions. Because it had not been just a word to her. It had been a denial of all which she had ever striven for. Everything which she wanted to be; successful and appreciated. Recognized for her journalistic skills.
Not... A zero.

The rope too, terrified her because of that same reason. Because of what it implied. Not because of its coarse surface or because of the burning sensation which it might leave on her skin. No, because of the noose which he had tied with the material.
A noose. Hanging. Death.
Death.
That word echoed at least several times throughout her mind as she stared at what his hands had so skillfully created. Her eyes were wide, the fear in them not all played. Vaguely, she recalled something about the man liking it when they squirmed. Squirmed.
Only now did Joanne realize that she was attempting to move her body, ignoring the protests of her freshly stitched skin as she dragged the damaged skin over the floor. Her battered body was unconsciously responding to the grim future he was showing her; her breaths slowing until they were little more than a deep and extremely slow inhaling and exhaling of the cool air.

It was odd. Odd, again. Why was she so frightened of this mere symbol? Was it because Danielle's glimmer of hope had contaminated her? Because it had reminded Joanne of the slim hope she still harbored? The idea that she could be saved and thus, needed to survive? Survive and perhaps do things which she otherwise might not have done?
When suddenly, she found herself confronted with someone who would put an end to all those hopes. Just like that. Here, in a dirty prison. In some forgotten backroom. Hung.

Joanne blinked. Once. Twice. Thrice?
Her widened eyes realized that they were still staring at the noose. But the noose would offer her nothing. Staring at it and not doing anything would mean the end. For some reason, Joanne found herself very convinced of that little fact.
With effort, she tore her green eyes away from the rope, instead focusing her fearful gaze on the man who towered over her. Joaquin. Danielle had told that she ought to lure him away from his mind and instill other desires within him instead. However, Joanne had no idea how she could convince her trembling body to even think about sex at this very moment. It was paralyzed, frozen with a shaky fear.
The journalist opened her mouth. Closed it. Parted her lips and suddenly realized that her breathing had increased.
"You are going to kill me..?" The woman was uncertain whether she had spoken those words as a simple fact or whether she had attempted to pose the man a question. Her voice had trembled, just like the rest of her body, which lay shivering on the cold concrete. But it was not the chilly material of the floor which had sent her shivering. It was the man. Joaquin. And what he was about to do with her.

"Please don't..!" Those last two words had been a mere whisper, rushed sounds between her now increasingly rushed breath. It was almost as if she had forgotten to beg for the life she wished to keep and only now remembered. Squirming. Apologize. No corn field. No oceans. Just her. Surviving.
If she ever wanted to finish her story... If she even wished to have so much as a chance to finish her story, she ought to do all of that. Right now. If she wanted to have something left to cling to - she ought to act right now.

More words tumbled from Joanne's trembling lips as she attempted to raise herself, shaky arms struggling to support her slender body as this realization struck her. "I am sorry," she spoke, her voice still shaky. She repeated it. Once in English, once in Spanish. Her eyes were begging him - not so much to believe her as much as to let her go. "You are right," she corrected herself. "I should be punished." She nodded, shook her head and then nodded again - her body attempting to respond to her panicked thoughts and the words which she actually uttered at the same time. "Make an example of me." Her voice became steadier, the look in her eyes still fearful and yet becoming strangely determined. "Make me suffer. But please, do not kill me."
 
Joaquin did not respond to any of her question. Maybe he already considered her to be a dead piece of meat, pointless to speak to? The only reaction her desperate pleading instilled in him was a faint smile as if the terrified girls forlorn words were just some old joke he had already heard before. There was no hint of compassion in his determined eyes and no sign of doubt in the expression of his face. In fact, there were nothing human at all in what he did: no sign of his own humanity, and no recognition of her. With mechanical precision, he bent down and thread the noose around her neck, tightening it just enough to allow her to continue breathing. The thick, rugged rope scraped against the soft skin of her throat.

"Jordán, lift Zero up." he commanded and the big man got up with surprising agility from where he was sitting. He grabbed the nude girl under her arms, the fingers of his huge hands clasping her breasts, and lifted her up from the cold concrete floor. "Jordán lifts Zero up." he repeated as if to remind himself of what he was doing. Then he carried her to the corner where most of the pipes intersected, but what happened next was not what one could have expected. Joaquin did not tie the loose end of the rope around a pipe. Jordán did not let go of her body. They did not watch her fall to her inevitable end, some spastic twitching being the last movement she ever made.

Instead Jordán put her down into the tub, with her stitched up back against the cold metal. The tub was just big enough to fit a human being lying down in it, and the sides were so high that she could see nothing but the pipes and the ceiling above her. There were no drain in the bottom, but five metal loops had been welded to it. Their position - two at each long side and one in the middle of the short side where her head was - gave away their intended use. Soon Joaquin's arrogant face covered her field of vision, as he bended down over the tub and tied the loose end of the rope to the metal loop on the short side. She would not be able to raise her head more than a couple of centimeters above the bottom of tub without the noose tightening around her neck and blocking her air supply. Next, he moved on to her hands. One by one he wrapped wide cuffs of brown leather tight around her wrists and locked them to the metal loops with large padlocks. Her ankles then received the same treatment, leaving her completely tied down with her arms along her sides and her legs slightly spread. The only thing she could move was her head, and she had strong reasons not to.

With a feverish smile on his face, most of his anger converted to triumphant malice now that he could watch his enemy tied down and vulnerable, he dangled the key chain over her face. To give her plenty of opportunity to study the four small pieces of glistening metal that could set her free from her predicament he tied the chain to a string and the string to a pipe, so that the keys were slowly, almost hypnotically, swinging to and fro just a decimeter above her eyes.

"Jordán, the pipe!" Joaquin ordered and pointed to a thin pipe that ran right above the tub. "Jordán brake pipe." he said as he raised his thick, muscular arms and grabbed the pipe. With all his strength he pulled, trying to brake the pipe. Joaquin returned to his prisoner. "I will teach you a chant, Zero." he said, looking down at the immobilized package in the tub. "It goes like this: My name is Zero, because I am nothing. My body is a hole to be filled. My mind is a hole to be filled. I am a hole to be filled." He picked up a small walkie-talkie from his pocket. "We will leave you here, and you will repeat your chant over and over and over again." he said and placed the walkie-talkie on the brim of the tub. "If we decide that you are worth keeping - we will make our decision in a couple of hours or perhaps a couple of days, who knows - we will listen in on you on the radio. If we hear you repeat your chant, we will come and get you. If not we will leave you here. You only have one chance."

The end of the sentence drowned in a loud, screeching sound as Jordán finally managed to break the pipe using the strength of his arms alone. "But all that is if we decide to keep you." Joaquin said. Suddenly a spurt of yellow fluid came out of the broken pipe. It hit Joanne's chest right between her breasts, and the liquid splashed out over her torso with some drops spraying her face. A foul smell of ammonium filled the tank. "You are right under the men's room. That pipe runs directly from the urinals." Joaquin informed her. "Now, before we leave, do you have any reason why we should even consider to come back to get you?"
 
"Because I will be worth the effort."
Whether the effort was directed at saving her person, the possible gratification which her flesh could offer or whether she was hinting at something even more darker, the very efforts involved in breaking her down bit by bit was decidedly unclear.
Perhaps Joanne did not even know herself when she looked up at the man; her green eyes meeting his' as she laid there, her stitched and bruised body chained to the metal tub. The cord which tugged at her neck both frightened and reassured her. It could kill her - but only slowly. More importantly, it had not killed her yet. She was still alive. She had a fighting chance.
Well, a chance. A sliver of hope.

Joanne's eyes had wavered briefly before they met those dark and hate-filled orbs of Joaquin; their hesitance already betraying more than a hint of fear at her predicament. Those green eyes betrayed a whole range of emotions which included but was not limited to fear, hints of anger, humiliation and an odd determination. Joanne had little illusions concerning her chances; her miserable life was truly in the ends of this man now and they both knew it. She could offer him nothing which he could not take immediately. Nothing, safe a chance at something which might stir his body as well as his mind. Breaking her down.

The disgusting liquid was lukewarm and once it got into contact with her bruised and broken skin, it stung ever so slightly. The diluted salt within the piss bit into her freshly cleaned and stitched wounds. The stinging was not at all bad; the strong smell which assaulted her eyes and nose alike was far force. As was the realization that she would have to struggle the coming... Hours? Days? ... More? for breath. Once the 'water' had reached a certain level, she would deny herself breathing merely by attempting to lift her head and draw it. Whereas she had found herself thirsting for any liquid, any fluid before - she would soon find herself drowning in the disgusting piss.
Slowly but surely, her body would tire of the precarious balance between breathing and drinking and Joanne feared the painful struggle which laid ahead of her. Painful. But above all, humiliating.

Part of her genuinely wondered whether there would be anything left to break down.
It made her previous statement feel awkward, wrong in some ways. Joanne was uncertain about what the man would find if - and only if - he would come and collect what this humiliating torture would leave behind.
All in all, it was a bold statement - even though her voice had not betrayed even a single hint of arrogance as she had spoken the words. It was an odd statement at the very least.
Especially since it was followed by something which, in some ways, completely contradicted her former words.
"My name is Zero, because I am nothing. My body is a hole to be filled. My mind is a hole to be filled. I am a hole to be filled."
Disgust and fear fought with determination while Joanne's body struggled against the flow of her urine; her mind struggling with the words which she had just spoken on top of the rather smelly battle of her body against the yellowish fluids.
No cornfields. And God forbid, no oceans.
 
Joaquin just snorted at her reply. "You are worth nothing. That is why your name is Zero." he said, his words echoing the chant he had taught her. Another stream of tepid piss flowed from the pipe, wetting her breasts even more and intensifying the stench. "And don't forget: if we don't hear you repeating your chant, you will not have a second chance." he said while the urine soaked her. Then he turned around and walked out of the room, followed closely by Jordán who closed the door after them. The only light that had lit up the room had came from the corridor, so once the door was closed everything went pitch dark. Were it not for the heavy feeling of her sensitive skin resting against the cold metal she might just as well have been floating around in empty space. The only thing she could see was the vague glistering of the keys that were still swinging right above her green eyes like a pendulum.

There were nothing that Joanne could do than think, recite the chant, and wait. Piss came flowing from the pipe more often than not, sometimes it was just as trickling runlet and sometimes it was a heavy rain. Soon the bottom of the tub was filled up, and the water level started to rise. The logic of the chant was both cruel and simple. Would she stop for just five minutes, she would never know if they had listened in and decided to leave her there. Then the rest of her repetitive mumbling would be pointless since she would be fighting to earn a prize she had already lost until she either starved to death or drowned in hundreds of men's urine. Or decided to just raise her head to have a last, short breath of fresh air and then have it over with.

It was hard to keep track of the time with so little external input. The only indication she had that time was actually passing was the dribbling sound of the urine and the swinging of the keys. But soon the keys slowed down until they came to a stand still, and all that was left was the flow of body fluids. After what could have been a couple of hours, but might as well have been just five minutes, steps could be heard through the door. Someone came walking through the corridor and stopped right outside the door! A key was put into the lock and turned around to lock it, and then whoever it was walked back the way he came. The precaution was completely unnecessary - Joanne was not going anywhere anyway.

Later the stream of stale intensified into a constant flow of stinking, cloudy liquid. Probably they had just had dinner above her. After a while the stream was thinned down, but occasional spurts continued for a long while. After what felt like forever, but could not have been more than a couple of hours, it stopped completely, when all the inmates were locked up in their cells during the night. By then the lake of piss she was immersed in had just reached up to her face, making it hard for her to speak without some of it flowing into her yawn past the corners of her mouth. Her toes, the top of her tits and her face was the only thing sticking up from the yellow surface. Her hair was wet with it, the beautiful auburn floating in the piss around her head.

She got plenty of time to think about what she would do once it started flowing again in the morning. Would she just drink it? Would she resist it as long as she could hold her breath? Would she lift her neck just a tiny bit to postpone the inevitable for a short while? There were no good options, only differently bad ones. Eventually the morning came, and hundreds of convicts hurried out of their cells towards the canteen. Predictably many of them wanted to empty their full bladders and headed straight for the urinals. Seconds later all their piss came flowing down into Joanne's tub.
 
Mere minutes blurred into hours and day blurred into night. Or that was what Joanne assumed, her extremely tired mind unable to keep track of the time in this room. Instead, every moment was filled with piss. Piss and the way in which it stung ever so subtly whenever it came into contact with her broken and bruised skin. How that sensation slowly dissipated, flowing into the next sensation which consisted of more constant and nagging pains. Her nose and eyes, irritated by the stench of piss. Occasionally she would gag, her eyes filling themselves with tears anew while she struggled for a breath of fresh air which simply was not there.
Just that horrid and humiliating stench. Ammonia. Everywhere. It seeped into her skin, penetrating her flesh and airways whenever she moved or breathed.

Her voice had become softer again; her throat sour and dry despite the presence of so much liquids. Still, she repeated the words. Joanne was uncertain whether she had dozed off in between; even when she closed her eyes, everything seemed to be stained with piss, the sensation permeating her very thoughts. Piss and chanting. Breathing and pain. Fear and humiliation.
Those seemed to be the only constants in this room.
Occasionally she would cough and gag, struggling with herself whenever the yellow fluid brushed against her lips, seeping into her mouth. But most of the times, she was held to a feverish rhythm of chanting and struggling for breath. Amidst the piss.
Always the piss.
Whether it was merely the yellow fluid which surrounded her, soaking her worn skin and further hurting her already sour flesh or whether it would run down her chest, spraying against her face and whatever part of her was not continuously exposed to the disgusting and humiliating liquid. Such parts became increasingly rare however, the level of piss rising until breathing became a more constant struggling.

And then it came. Streams and streams of it, sending her into fits of coughing and gagging while she struggled to chant and breathe at the same time. She tried to avoid it at first, spitting the somewhat salty fluid out in between the chanted syllables. But then Joanne could no longer avoid it. Almost choking herself on the liquid, she gulped down a large quantity of piss - her face contorting with disgust. More words, a quick breath and then another gulp of liquid gold. Joanne gagged, her mind telling her body to refuse the very substance which was drowning her. The chant continued, increasingly interrupted by gags and coughs until the poor woman instinctively tried to pull herself up.
Her desperate attempt was rewarded with a sharp pain in the flesh of her already extremely sensitive neck. The journalist wanted to scream, but instead - her words were literally drowned when another load of the yellow liquid filled her mouth and nose alike. She swallowed, coughed and sputtered, struggling to continue her chant while she felt everything around her become increasingly heavy.
Had it been hours? Minutes? Days? Had time passed at all? Was... Was she still alive?

The journalist was no longer certain whether piss still trickled down from the pipe; her struggle against the liquid occupying most of her mind and body - gulps intertwined with gags and coughs. The words still flowed from her lips, feverish attempts at breathing interrupting them whenever her body could. The meaning of the words had been inscribed over and over in her faint and tired mind. Zero. Nothing. A hole to be filled.
A piss-drenched hole. Filled with piss.
Joanne was uncertain whether she had actually spoken the words. Whether the piss was finally tainting her words as well. But she could not pause to ask and her tired mind was increasingly unable to separate what was merely in her mind and what escaped from it, out into the piss-filled out-side world.

"My name..." A series of coughs, interrupted by the sounds of gulping something down and a clear struggle in order to do so. "... Is Zero, because..." She gagged, like she did every now and then - her feverish mind realizing anew what it was which stained every last bit of her body. "I am nothing. My body is a hole to be filled. My mind..."
How could her body still be empty? It felt as if piss was everywhere. It was.
Everywhere.
"is a hole to be filled. I am a hole to be filled."
Everywhere.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom